The first episode of Bear With Me still hints at a greater game to come, nicely setting a proper noir tone with some occasional creepy bits and a gleeful dose of snark throughout. But it sadly says a lot that the initial outing feels more like a demo for the game than an actual full-fledged chapter of the story.

Sadly, Futuridium EP Deluxe does not stand on par with some of these gems, instead fading into the background, never to be heard from again.

In the end, Pocket Mortys ends up being the video game equivalent of Pirates of the Pancreas: something that had the potential for an amazing ride, but is held back and never gets a chance to shine, doomed to wind up being talked about in unenthusiastic tones.

Unfortunately, the age of the collection is its greatest undoing. While World Heroes certainly isn’t the worst 2D fighter ever made, it isn’t the best, either.

Scribblenauts Unmasked feels less like a video game and more like a chore. That’s a phrase too often thrown around in video game reviews, but it’s about as apt as a comparison one could draw.

DmC fans will get passable enjoyment from the ability to play as Vergil, but besides that, it’s a trivial addition to a compelling game.

Filled with half-baked ideas, repetitive mission design and the smallest explorable area yet, Curse of Osiris feels as empty and meaningless as The Dark Below. The expansion’s campaign fails to push the overall narrative forward and does little with its interesting setup, the Crucible is a mess until Bungie patches it, and the Infinite Forest feels like it needed more time in the oven. Add in some extremely-questionable business practices and you have the most disappointing expansion to hit the Destiny franchise. Though the expansion is as beautiful as ever, and the gunplay as solid as before, Curse of Osiris fails to provide Destiny 2 or Bungie with a new lease on life.

Thanks to these problems, a visually charming and potentially enjoyable — if thoroughly unoriginal — tower defense game becomes much harder to recommend. Of course, grinding to earn upgrade points is always an option, but the levels aren’t that charming.

Despite nailing the feeling of flying around in its Javelin suits and crafting a beautiful world, there’s nothing in Anthem to hold a player’s interest. It all gets old quickly thanks to bland encounters, dumb enemies, a borderline empty world and a dull story. Add to that a general sense of technical instability, loading issues, non-existent end-game and utterly boring loot, and the result is a game that feels unfinished, underdeveloped and wholly unsatisfying. Maybe check it out a year from now, but don’t even bother otherwise. There are many other games that offer a similar experience and they all do it better.

The storytelling and level design might keep players interested enough to make it through the main story, but the lack of depth in gameplay and role-playing makes it hard to imagine anyone wanting to spend their time playing Atomfall over any other successful title in the genre.

The release of Sakura Fantasy Chapter 1 feels a bit exploitative, however, in that it costs the same amount as previous titles while offering much less from a length standpoint.

One Piece: Romance Dawn is a great idea that was poorly executed. While fans and newcomers will appreciate the story, the gameplay feels like an afterthought. It becomes bland after mere hours and starts to feel like you’re going through the motions. This is not the reaction you want in an RPG, especially a long one like Romance Dawn.

The strange thing about The Lost Child is that, despite its many, many flaws, it still manages to be entertaining by virtue of being a bog standard, but competent, first-person dungeon crawler with a great pace of progress. It’s not worthy of scorn, nor praise, managing to cut right down the middle of the road.

Gemini: Heroes Reborn in itself is an enjoyable superhero simulator, but it gets by as a Heroes game in title and references only and is far too long winded and repetitive to be considered much else.

Death by Game Show is not an incompetently made game, but as a collection of design decisions the sum and its individual parts are annoying, disappointing or frustrating.

Unfortunately, in its present state, it doesn't work all that often, but hey, lesson learned. [July 2007, p.61]

Fans of Neptune and Friends will likely have a great time here. Those who already hate it should run away. For those who aren’t sure? Well, despite its warts, it’s a decent introduction to the series, and a great way to see which side of the line they will fall on.

Inmates is a textbook example of untapped potential. It’s obvious what the developer was trying to accomplish, but was only partly successful. The ingredients for psychological horror are present but they just never come together in a meaningful way. Inmates features the grand environment that is perfect to get under one’s skin but slow gameplay, linear progression, predictable storyline and reliance on jump scares takes a promising premise and leaves it mired in mediocrity. It’s a short time investment and inexpensive, so if it sounds interesting, there is some enjoyment to be had playing through it but there’s better options for those looking for a cerebral fright fix. It’s impressive for a technical project accomplished by one person, but unfortunately that is not something that factors into how enjoyable a gaming experience is.

Toast Time is fun, but shallow.

Twisted Arrow is ugly, simple and fails to break any real ground. What little plot there is during the short campaign shows the same lack of creativity as the graphical design. Yet, through the feel of firing the bow and dealing with the enemies in various ways, it succeeds where it’s the most important: it’s fun. Remarkably fun, at that. It ties the mechanics in so close with the player’s skill, using the motion controls in a way that’s more noticeably tuned than other games that have tried the same thing. This might be enough for quite a few players, this reviewer included. As a package, this is a rough offering, but for the forgiving, Twisted Arrow is worth the time.

Ultimately what kills the experience are the microtransactions. While the game might be $40, literally 80% of the Superstars are locked with some that you can’t even pay for (John Cena). There was a lot of potential here but it doesn’t come close to the arcade experience that WWE All-Stars had. It’s hard to tout WWE 2K Battlegrounds as a social game with the focus on variety coming from the single player portion.

A lazy port of a set of lazy ports from six years ago, but it is technically the best way to play two fantastic games – and also Devil May Cry 2. There is absolutely no reason for any fan who already picked up the original HD Collection to give this one a go, but if you’re an old fan who doesn’t have access to the PlayStation 2 originals or a gamer that’s always been interested in the franchise, you can’t go wrong picking this collection up for $29.99 USD.

Combat feels stiff, unresponsive, and overwrought, though it captures the visual excitement of the anime nicely. If that were all there is to the game, it would be pretty average, but everything else just gets in the way.

Splatter’s main gameplay is solid; it just needs to fix a handful of issues to be considered a contender.

It’s strange to see that a follow-up that is in theory better wind up being less fun than the first, but that’s the case with Gear Club Unlimited 2. The game needed a bit more time in the oven and it’s evident in the final product.

Simply put, there are better visual novels out there.

Basement Crawl is a reasonably-priced, well-made game lacking the features to make it a must-have. It simply doesn’t offer enough as a multiplayer-only game to fully recommend as a purchase to anyone other than folks who are dying for Bomberman on the PS4.

Despite my many hangups with this collection, you can still have heaps of fun. The game is compelling as you set traps for your opponents, cast spell cards to improve your monster's ATK and DEF, and tribute your current beasts for stronger cards like the Blue Eyes White Dragon (which is also in Legacy of the Duelist). Playing Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championships 2004 sent a wave of nostalgia towards me, and if I had a Switch copy of this collection, I'd be playing it for hours, lying on my couch, just like my childhood. It's just a shame that this collection failed to modernize the classic games with better UI. The lack of save states is also frustrating, and the selection of games on offer may be a disappointment, especially because the Game Boy games are outdated. Also, I don't know about you, but Dungeon Dice Monsters might be the worst idea for the series, and that's unfortunately part of this collection rather than something like Duelists of the Roses. It's probably best to ignore this collection and check out the more recent Master Duel instead if you're not affected by nostalgia.

The King’s Challenge is a serviceable old school point ‘n’ click adventure that should appeal to fans that found the recent remake by Sierra a tad too removed from the spirit of the original.

ERICA stands as an intriguing example of connecting players with a game through touch controls. It succeeds primarily as a technical feat and less so as a deeply-engrossing video game. If the storyline were given more time to grow then maybe it would have blossomed into something special. As is, it’s akin to a murder mystery popcorn flick. There’s fun to be had solving the mystery, but not quite enough to create a memorable experience.

Some occasionally-credible voice work and performances from its cast aside, The Last Worker (in a fitting, albeit ironic, kind of way) ends up as deprived and joyless as the very corporate setting it means to ridicule.

Who would have thought a game with a snowy setting such as this would look so dull? There’s some good to be discovered in I Am Setsuna, but it’s overshadowed by its sheer unoriginality and repetitiveness.

Crushed beneath a monotony of drones to trash, muffled dialogue to decipher and environments to float amidst, there are brief pleasantries and welcome respites in Marvel’s Iron Man VR. Distractions that unfortunately amount to the only genuinely welcome highs in a VR effort that, commendable an effort it is to move out of the regular shooting gallery format, are wound up in one too many technical follies and lackluster mission objectives for the implied liberties to feel substantial. Yet in a game with such dire over-reliance on its players treating its controls and combat — both at the same time — like second-nature, when the erroneous ways with motion controls crop up, the damage to one’s time (and thus one’s enjoyment) is far more detrimental. Appeasing fans with its source material, on its own, is a harmless endeavor. So long as there are little difficulties and confusions with the gameplay accompanying it. Marvel’s Spider-Man proved what good-will can be generated out of such licensed iterations, when wielded properly. Marvel’s Iron Man VR, however, is a flawed but ultimately frustrating effort to sell. Twisting the once-attractive proposal of being Iron Man into a clumsy misdirection.

Unless there’s a major update in the near future, you’d be better off waiting until it inevitably becomes part of an indie bundle so that you can briefly jump in and enjoy its first few hours. Until then, your money and time should be spent elsewhere.

Mostly, this is a purchase for those who are willing to show their support for doujin creators. Tobari and the Night of the Curious Moon is a mouthful of a title that isn’t as magical as desired.

The idea of a Star Wars game focusing entirely on the world of outlaws in its seedier parts of the universe is a great one, but it deserved a different kind of game than Star Wars Outlaws, instead of being suited for something more like Shadows of Doubt, Disco Elysium or even L.A. Noire. Even a straight, linear action game would be better. Instead, we get a boring, open-world monstrosity with uninspired gameplay, way too many useless features and a constant deluge of uninteresting side content. Kay and company deserve way better and so do the players. Save your credits and wait for something like a solo Kessel Sabacc game instead.

It’s oh so close to achieving high marks from a gameplay perspective, but it’s also hurt greatly by a lack of polish that makes it a hard product to recommend at launch. In time, there’s a chance we’ll see some improvements that tighten up some of its loose ends and while that’d be unlikely to fix every issue the game has, it may result in it being a more complete experience. As it stands, it feels like a half-baked product that succeeds in spite of its shortcomings, but still needs more work to be a must-buy pickup for either fans of the show or brawler fanatics alike.

Those simply looking for a great game of virtual hockey will find some enjoyment here, but dedicated players who enjoy digging deep into the various modes EA has introduced over the years will be sorely disappointed.

If you’re the type of gamer who is actively seeking a more calming experience in a landscape scattered with non-stop action and intensity, then perhaps KOI will provide you with the type of entertainment that you’re looking for. If, however, you are looking for KOI to be anything more than it is, namely a collection of ideas in a pretty package that don’t mesh well together, then you’re going to find yourself sorely disappointed.

Overkill VR is nowhere near the worst experience a gamer can have in VR. In fact, it’s great using its cover system to trick the player into performing facsimiles of squats and burpees. It’s just that there is so much fine tuning that needs to be done to make it a great game. The enemies’ hit points needs to be dropped, reloading is screaming for reworking to allow for better player immersion and levels need to be more than figuring out the enemy spawn points and dominating them.

The RPG elements and distinct visual style do present some life, but don’t go in expecting this to be a mechanically sound game.

Even without the police chases and the breathtaking scenery, ProStreet could have been a great game. Instead, it’s a competent but not particularly interesting racing title that will constantly leave you wishing that you were playing a console version instead.

It’s extremely difficult to recommend Hadaka Shitsuji to visual novel fans out there due to two key reasons. The first is that the content included in the game is varied and quite extreme on occasion. Secondly, the routes are confusing and difficult to get right on a blind playthrough. The game is intriguing in its depiction of cruelty, but that’s certainly something of an acquired taste. Check the game out if you’ve got a taste for the extreme, sometimes absurd content, and an appreciation for butlers.

We Are The Dwarves shouldn’t be completely dismissed, as it still at least has some neat ideas, controls nicely and looks pretty, but it comes across being so viciously unfair that it can only be recommended to the most hardcore fans of this genre.

This is a two-and-a-half-year-old title brought to current-gen consoles with minimum effort at close to full price.

For its price and what its trying to do, Ghost Blade HD isn’t the worst time. Navigating mazes of instant death in the form of the projectiles does have an inherent value. It’s just that there are so many better examples of the genre available across all platforms. If the player is looking for something to ease them into this type of game, this will fit the bill. The bullet pattern design does play fair. The real worry is that a newcomer might play this and wonder what all the fuss is about. Already indoctrinated fans will just find themselves bored in short order.

Ultimately, Alwa’s Awakening feels like the foundation to what might have been a rather more substantial revisit of the glorious 8-bit like so many before it. Though its varied locales and array of gems to find do at least give plenty of food for thought on how to achieve what may feel like a frustratingly impossible task, a lot of the finished product that comprises Alwa’s Awakening comes across as either undercooked or much too rose-tinted and reliant on nostalgia for the pure sake of it.

Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel is not a bad game — just an extremely generic one.

The simple gameplay of Krut suits the relatively short length of the game. Like many classic games it tries to use challenging enemies to extend the playtime, but it doesn’t take long to figure out the game mechanics and enemy patterns, making boss encounters challenging at first but still beatable on the first or second try. The enemies change their appearance throughout the levels, but don’t really change their behavior pattern, making every battle feel pretty much the same. Most of the difficulty comes from substandard control response. Krut: The Mythic Wings‘ price of entry can make it worthy for fans of this style of gameplay, but as the price tag suggests, there isn’t a ton of depth or replay value.

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD has some fantastic ideas implemented with restrictive elements that ultimately don’t work with a console release.

With only about ten hours of gameplay (give or take), it feels too long in all the wrong ways. I’m optimistic, however, that KeokeN Interactive can finesse development to bring quality to future titles.

Rainbow Six Siege‘s core concept, namely its destructible world and reliance on communication-based strategy, is strong, but everything surrounding it seems to falter.

While its concept is unique, its execution leaves an incredible amount to be desired. Unfortunately, the mystery of Ronan’s murder is not nearly as thought-provoking as the mystery of when Murdered: Soul Suspect will be offered at a discount.

Strike Suit Infinity is not a game that is terrible by any means. It’s just a game that had some really high hopes for itself but failed to deliver those things in a way that was organic and a little bit more fun.

This game is strictly for DBZ fans who, in addition, are crazy about the early Budokai games. [June 2007, p.63]

There are far better uses for both your money and your time.

It’s been a full four months since Episode Five ended on a massive decision that left players reeling. Given Telltale’s past work on the series, it was hard to imagine that Episode Six would actually do right by that decision and manage to wrap the season up in a remotely satisfying way. Sure enough, huge chunks of Episode Six are just as middling as everything else in the season, and on a technical level, it’s even worse.

Fallout 76 tried to take the series in a new direction, and while Bethesda has done great things with the franchise in the past, this ultimately feels like a misstep. Fallout has always excelled as a single player experience, so hopefully we can see a proper Fallout 5 in the near future.

Milestone delivers on its slate of upgrades introduced in Monster Energy Supercross 4, but the racing remains frustrating and unapproachable for new players. The Career Mode is a welcome addition even though it may not match up to other franchises that are out there, while The Compound gives players a new location to free roam around in, but is ultimately the same thing outside of the location. The PlayStation 5 version allows for better visuals and the inclusion of the DualSense Controller, but the engine that everything is based on is old. Those that are hardcore fans of the series will enjoy these additions if they continue to overlook the legacy issues. The next-generation version is basically an improved version of the previous-gen version by default due to the hardware, and outside of the Career Mode, Monster Energy Supercross 4 is more of the same.

Good level design and challenging gameplay sadly end up getting hindered by cheap shots, questionable controls and an underdeveloped premise.

At the end of the day, unless you’re an agriculture fanatic that is interested in the rush of cultivating and harvesting fields for hours on end, you’re likely to feel cheated by a lack of content, boring gameplay and unimpressive visuals. Ultimately, the farm life is exactly what I expected — a lot of hard work for very little pay off.

There have been plenty of outings over the past few years that take the basic template of golf, as a sport, and manage to transform into something else. Whether it’s deep in strategy or surreal in delivery, fans of golf have been well serviced. Golf With Your Friends, by contrast, comes across as the antithesis of this approach. A game that goes out of its way to antagonize, despite its variety and ridiculousness in course design. In some parts, that philosophy does find a way to delight and entertain, without descending into an unnecessary leap of faith or threading the needle-like situation that most of its holes unfortunately end up forcing players into. Those who can find joy in such random, unearned chaos may get a small ounce of fun here, but for everybody else, Golf With Your Friends‘ unpolished, finicky and messy delivery takes little time to put even the most patient of mini-golf enthusiasts off completely.

Despite keeping an open mind with the title, its concept is flawed in its execution and it lacks a sense of identity and purpose for its characters and story. What seemed like a title that could reinforce the reason not to judge a book by its cover proves to be the exact opposite in almost every aspect.

Controlling gravity is fun and the game’s charming art design is well worth noting, but Constant C never gives the player a sense of command over its design, leaving puzzles that rely more on careless experimentation than thought-provoking logic to solve.

It’s a game that tries too hard to be vague and ambiguous that it ultimately leaves the content that is there to process feeling disproportionately stagnant.

With bargain basement production values, mediocre visuals, boring gameplay and a substantial lack of features, there’s no reason to experience it. Adding salt to the wound is the fact that it’s for all intents and purposes a threequel to a mediocre clone of Super Smash Bros. Melee released the same month as the current-generation version of that series will debut.

Unfortunately for all the minor smiles and well-orchestrated music that accompanies one’s travels, The Longest Five Minutes feels mostly like a sterile assembly of classic JRPG’s least-appealing necessities. Its premise of losing one’s memory and the relation that has between past and present occurrences could have been an interesting twist on RPG mechanics to uncover, but it ends up being little more than a stale alternative to what is a rather unaltered series of common JRPG affairs. The Longest Five Minutes heralds some pleasantries and quirky moments of respite at points, but with a near-offensively easy combat system, brief dungeons and a lacking overworld to trudge through, competently made it may be, The Longest Five Minutes sadly ends taking up a much shorter breadth of your attention.

This is a showcase for the graphical power of the PlayStation 4 and nothing more. Rudimentary gameplay, a poorly executed story and an unwelcoming visual palette make it come off as cold, uninspired and most importantly not all that fun.

Active Life Outdoor Challenge is mildly entertaining from a game standpoint and features beginner level physical activity from an exercise one. It’s not a bad form of exertainment, just not a remarkably good one. In small doses it can be fun and could lead to enjoying more strenuous exercises, but ultimately it’s updating the Wii gimmick of using the floormat with a Switch gimmick of using a leg strap. There are better games out there that incorporate physical fitness into gaming. The main selling point is probably for people who have strong nostalgia for the Wii original, but that’s likely a niche market.

Hitting the right buttons in the right order in time to the beat isn’t a terrible way to spend a bit of gaming time, but there’s just not enough meat on KickBeat‘s bones to keep the music flowing.

PacaPlus excels at being a strange visual novel with a girlfriend turned into a fluffy alpaca. It falters when attempting to create a tale which is joyful to read, through. With middling writing, readers will most likely find themselves playing simply because of the silly premise rather than because they care at all about Kazuma or Yukari’s plight. That’s not awful — but it would have been fantastic to see the second English version of this game offer immensely improved translation quality. Instead, we’ve got a bare-bones effort which reduces the Engrish-ness but otherwise leaves the mechanical script alone. In some respects, the game is far funnier in the PacoProject translation and as such may be worth grabbing from DLsite instead of Steam. Still, if all you need is ridiculous sequences with a goofy alpaca, PacaPlus has you covered.

Just Dance 2016 should (and probably will) be the franchise’s last physical release. While the core gameplay remains fun despite some questionable choreography, the overall package reeks of complete and utter apathy.

PIQ2 is themed around measuring intelligence, but all it ends up doing is testing rote memorization and dexterity. [July 2007, p.63]

Charming as it might seem, Krillbite’s attempt at horror turns out about as scary as a brightly-colored bed sheet.

The Inpatient’s short duration and lack of entertainment value doesn’t warrant its forty dollar price tag. For fans of Until Dawn, it does a decent job of filling in important information prior to the events of the original game. For everyone else, it’s a dull experience that never quite feels like it’s going anywhere worthwhile. Horror and VR are a natural fit, but with The Inpatient, it’s clear that the pairing doesn’t always work quite the way it should.

With such an interesting story and a great narrator, Kholat truly dropped the ball in what could have been a great narrative, instead delivering nonsense dialogue and an incomprehensible plot.

Taking in the picture that Arcade Islands Volume One paints for itself as a whole, this isn’t a very good game. There’s enough that more than half is a mix of filler, retreads and just plain bad games. When one gets more granular, though, the value proposition begins to appear. The fun titles that can be appreciated as is would warrant between one to five dollars on their own. Adding those together exceeds the asking price. When factoring in a better than average use of PlayStation and Xbox’s metagame in the form of trophies and achievements, and the fact that it’s a safe title to introduce the youngins’ to video gaming as a concept, there’s a good reason for it to exist.

Put pure-and-simply, it’s a game that tries to win you over solely on its distorted aesthetic, but ends up losing you (and annoying you) moreso.

What could have been a good game inspired by the great "Warioware" series instead is nothing more than a poor imitation. [Nov 2007, p.62]

Had Bullet Witch been a launch title, this bitter pill could've been swallowed, but with so many other great choices out there like "Gears of War" or "Lost Planet," there's simply no reason to play this. [Apr 2007, p.54]

Earth Defense Force 2017 is the action game equivalent of potato chips: no nutritional value, but tasty nonetheless. [May 2007, p.61]

Thor would have been a lot better with some more time and resources at hand. The problems of the game are plentiful and while some are forgivable considering what the game is, it still doesn't add up to a product worthy of Thor's prestige.

Thor would have been a lot better with some more time and resources at hand. The problems of the game are plentiful and while some are forgivable considering what the game is, it still doesn't add up to a product worthy of Thor's prestige.

It doesn't matter how good the rest of a game is, though, if the controls betray you just when you need them most. [May 2007, p.55]

It doesn't matter how good the rest of a game is, though, if the controls betray you just when you need them most. [May 2007, p.55]

RACE Pro has compelling racing mechanics when it is just you versus the track, but it has more than a few rough patches elsewhere.

Party games are supposed to contain playable sequences that are instantly accessible, engaging, and fun. In Fuzion Frenzy 2, there are precious few that fit that bill. [Apr 2007, p.56]

I can see the novel ideas going on here, but this game needs some serious extra time in the oven. Also, an analog stick. [Vol 3, Issue 2, p.63]

As far as licensed games go, it isn't too offensive, but it could have been so much more.

As far as licensed games go, it isn't too offensive, but it could have been so much more.

The Wii Fit Balance Board is of little help, and only serves to complicate things further.

There are just too many issues to make this a worthwhile purchase.

Games built entirely around boss battles can be great. Furi is popular for a reason. Gods Will Fall might have been better served if that was the route they went. Instead, it’s bogged down with levels that, while artistically solid, weigh on the entire experience. There’s one group of folks that should check this out: students of game design. This is not along the lines of “ha ha, this game sucks so bad everybody should see it.” This isn’t Ride to Hell: Retribution. Instead, people much smarter than this reviewer will be able to thoughtfully debate and discuss what didn’t work, why certain things didn’t work, and learn from this. God Will Fall is mostly tedious, but it comes from an honest place with real effort. Clever Beans has the talent and potential to create a fantastic title. Their first swing, though, isn’t it.

Until the bugs are ironed out, it’s just not worth the headache.

A mess. While the mechanics are slightly unpolished, they still have a similar feel to what we’ve come to expect, which can result in some enjoyable antics. Unfortunately, they are contained in a constrained formula where the player must navigate menu after menu to get into repetitive and uninteresting missions.

If you’re looking for a challenging, fast-paced action platformer should simply flock to games like Velocity 2X or Guacamelee, as both of these titles do everything that Aaru’s Awakening does, only better.

Journey of a Roach is a bog-standard adventure game built around a single kind of nifty idea.

Make no mistake, this is a Harvest Moon title only in name; everything else will feel foreign to the longtime fan.